#25 - Unless negotiations begin soon, the cease-fire will be

[cd1010]

I got this, but it took me 4 minutes! What actually took me a while was doing the diagrams for the stimulus (prior to looking at the question stem and answer choices). Basically, I was getting tangled up about whether the statements link or not. When I got to the ACs however, I was able to move through them more quickly than I expected.

My q is: do you have best practices for diagramming sentences when the elements are actually more complex? Normally, a simple stimulus would just have "negotiation" as an element that can be easily diagrammed as "N". But this stimulus uses negotiation in different ways ("Begin Negotiation", "Negotiations held"), and pressure in different ways ("countries have pressured", "continue pressure"). I had initially written these as N and P but then realized that that was not accurate, so I had to redo.

I see in the explanation that full phrases are written out, but I always hesitate to do this because in the act of doing the question, I'm second guessing myself if I'm being inefficient. But is it just better to write it out when it gets complicated like this q?

[Chandler H]

Hi CD,

Good question. You ask whether it's better to diagram with initials like "N" and "P," or with full words like "negotiations begin soon" and "cease-fire will be violated."

The best practice for you may be somewhere in the middle—the key is to use initialisms that will most help you remember the language of the stimulus. In this question, that could look like the following (with word translations in parentheses):

CFV NBS (If cease fire violated, then negotiations did not begin soon)
NH PTS (If negotiations held, then pressure two sides)
AE CP (If agreement emerge, then continued pressure)
NH CA SMI (If negotiations held, then counter aggression, then suppress major incentive)

Do you see how my initialisms helped me construct full "if/then" sentences, without writing too much? Your notation should be enough to "signpost" you through the question, reminding you of the important information you need to know. I hope this helps!